NATURALLY SPEAKING: Melting Ice Bears & Dried Up River Horses

« The Mongoose: A Maui Menace | Main | Hawaiian Honu: The Green Sea Turtle »

May 4, 2006

Melting Ice Bears & Dried Up River Horses

The Plight of the Polar Bear is one we've been hearing a lot about lately, with the melting ice in the polar north causing significant declines in areas like Northern Canada.

Enough concern resulted in some studies on the vulnerability of the polar bear, and this past week, The World Conservation Union (IUCN), the organization which maintains the world-wide endangered species list, published some disturbing findings.

Without a reversal of global warming trends, the IUCN predicted polar bear populations would drop more than 30 percent in the next 45 years as melted ice caps deprive the animals of their habitat.

...

The common hippo was also ranked as vulnerable, â€œprimarily because of a catastrophic decline in the Democratic Republic of Congo,â€ the IUCN said.

Unrestricted hunting for meat and ivory has caused a 95 percent decline in the central African countryâ€™s hippo population since 1994, it said. The animal has never before been listed as threatened.

More At: MSNBC: Polar bears, hippos on extinction short list

While polar bears are finding their hunting grounds melting from beneath their paws, the hippos (named for "river horses") are wallowing in dried up rivers for similar reasons - global warming. Herbivores by nature, the hippos leave the water during the night to graze on grasses, but they depend on the existence of rivers and mud holes for shelter, to keep cool, and to raise their young. They also play a very important role in the ecosystem by way of their dung, which provides nutrients for the local fish. The fish are a primary food source of the local people.

Because the hippo pods are always near precious water sources, hippo-human confrontations happen frequently and with fatal consequences.The hippos, once common throughout Africa, have suffered from a variety of setbacks in recent years, from the bushmeat trade to mysterious mass die-offs related to antrax and cannibalism. But yes, I still want a pet hippo. Just a little one.